The present invention relates to coin banks. More particularly, the present invention relates to a very accurate coin separating and sorting assembly for a coin bank, the assembly being able to sort all of a country's coins currently in widespread use. For the United States, such coins are the penny, nickel, dime, quarter and dollar coins.
Coin banks are generally known. A user places one or more coins in a hopper or similar coin receiving location. A coin separating mechanism separates the coins and moves them, hopefully one at a time, into a coin sorting mechanism. The coin sorting mechanism classifies the coins by their diameter. Coins of a particular diameter, and consequently of a particular denomination, are directed into the appropriate one of a plurality of sorted coin storage containers.
Coin separating mechanisms employing rotating coin separator plates are known. One known such separator plate is in the form of a disk having four U-shaped notches formed in its periphery. Each notch is sized to be larger in width than the largest coin which is to be sorted by the coin sorter. The separator plate is mounted on a planar base of a receiver, the base being fixed to an upper housing at a slope of approximately 45° from the horizontal. Coins tend to come to rest in the lowermost portion of the receiver with their faces contacting the separator plate or the base. When the separator plate is rotated, it will engage a coin with the edge of one of its notches and carry it upward to an opening formed in the base where the coin will fall through into an upper portion of a coin ramp leading to the sorting ramp. The ramp has apertures of increasing size through which the coins fall into sorted coin containers. The thickness of the sorter plate is chosen to be less than or equal to the thickness of the thinnest coin to be sorted so that only one coin at a time is engaged by each notch. However, this known coin separating mechanism does not employ a separator plate which delivers pre-oriented coins to a sorter. Nor does it perform its separating and sorting functions in a minimum of space. Also this known coin separating mechanism is not designed to handle dollar coins.
Accordingly, it is desirable to develop a new and improved coin separator and sorter assembly which would overcome the foregoing deficiencies and others as well as providing better and more advantageous overall results.